1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for splitting and connecting computer bus lines, especially on the mother board of a personal computer. More particularly, it relates to an electronic switching system which provides work stations for two or more users. The electronic switching system also allows several programs to run on a work station, i.e., multitasking. The switching system can operate under standard operating systems, for example, PC/DOS or MS/DOS.RTM. (referred to generally as DOS), and multi-user operating systems, e.g., Xenix.RTM. and Unix.RTM..
2. The Prior Art
With existing personal computers, there is often the need to split or connect individual bus lines based on requirements of the software. According to the prior art, such a change was only possible with extensive hardware changes on the mother board and/or cards.
Under the DOS operating system, personal computers of a known type currently support only a single work station, with one monitor and one keyboard, i.e., a single-user system. Many programs, however, demand relatively little processor time, peripheral involvement, or memory. As a result, the hardware capabilities are not utilized to their full capacity with the single-user system. It would therefore be practical in terms of the hardware to have parallel operations by several users at several work stations with multiple programs running at each work station.
Prior art networks, which connect personal computers together, run programs separately on each computer. Data or programs can be reciprocally exchanged through a file server and peripherals such as printers and disk drives can be shared. The necessity of acquiring a suitable personal computer for each work station, as well as the hardware and software for operating the network, is costly. The system according to the invention allows an IBM.RTM.-compatible PC to be used as a two-user or multi-user system with simultaneous multi-tasking capabilities, using conventional monitors, video cards and standard operating systems, such as DOS or multi-user operating systems.